Apple ‘Responds’ to Adobe’s Ad Campaign

Every now and then, you come across things that make the internet worthwhile. So yeah, there’s this whole genitalia length comparing competition going on between Adobe and Apple, where both companies are actually arguing, with straight faces, which of the two is more open (which to me comes across as Mario and Zelda arguing over who’s less of a sell-out). Luckily, though, there’s the internet to make us laugh.

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When MacOS was less advanced that even Windows98, Steve Jobs say that they are the best. When they compare Mac OS X with Windows, they say: Windows crash, which was not true anymore. When you compare today the JavaScript with Flash, you see that you cannot run just on IPhone. But I’m glad that I can look on Youtube using Flash (and not only) on my Android phone and I recommend anyone to get one. In Spain you can get an Htc Hero with Android with 0 euro with carriers. And you have openess not only to run flash, but to create your own applications, to write in one language that is not of Google (meaning Java) and your phone will have as many options as phone creators are: Samsung, Htc, Motorola

When MacOS was less advanced that even Windows98, Steve Jobs say that they are the best. When they compare Mac OS X with Windows, they say: Windows crash, which was not true anymore. When you compare today the JavaScript with Flash, you see that you cannot run just on IPhone. But I’m glad that I can look on Youtube using Flash (and not only) on my Android phone and I recommend anyone to get one. In Spain you can get an Htc Hero with Android with 0 euro with carriers. And you have openess not only to run flash, but to create your own applications, to write in one language that is not of Google (meaning Java) and your phone will have as many options as phone creators are: Samsung, Htc, Motorola

Steve Jobs wasn’t at Apple when Win98 was out. We were NeXT and NeXTSTEP was far and away superior to Win98.

My timing is on because: OS X was launched in 2001 and Steve Jobs was in Apple from 1997 and was showing Mac OS 9 “Revolutionary OS” like here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBiYsMIn32E . The single reason that Mac OS was more responsive, was that was running on faster hardware (PowerPC chips and later the G3 were even twice as fast as Pentium II at their times, but not because of their underlying OS). Please look on youtube on both presentations on Mac OS 9 with it’s great Sherlock application and with a PowerPC demo in Photoshop against a PC version. Till 2001, Mac OS have a technology that was less advanced than anything out-there (OS2, BeOS, Windows 9x or NT, or Linux).

The point of my comment was just hypocrisy. As of today, ALL(most) features of OS X are in Linux are in 2006 (like 2D vector graphic, buggy composite display) and of course in Vista. But Windows 2000 has for first time the kernel thread pools (which are GCD in Snow Leopard) and there are benchmarks showing that OS X were not performing well on G5 in multithreaded benchmarks (write in a search engine: anandtech g5 tiger.

Even today when we compare Vista (or 7) with Snow Leopard we have the same capabilities (like: Java vs .NET, PDF display, color profiles, etc.) but only that you can buy an full featured laptop at 1000 dollars (or euro) which if was named Apple you will pay at least 1700, and Windows license is not included.

This is why I’m glad at the end I have Flash on Android: is about the ecosystem, an open one, informed one, with all your options in one place. Not one carrier, not one phone model (with it’s upgrades), not software.

My timing is on because: OS X was launched in 2001 and Steve Jobs was in Apple from 1997 and was showing Mac OS 9 “Revolutionary OS” like here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBiYsMIn32E . The single reason that Mac OS was more responsive, was that was running on faster hardware (PowerPC chips and later the G3 were even twice as fast as Pentium II at their times, but not because of their underlying OS). Please look on youtube on both presentations on Mac OS 9 with it’s great Sherlock application and with a PowerPC demo in Photoshop against a PC version. Till 2001, Mac OS have a technology that was less advanced than anything out-there (OS2, BeOS, Windows 9x or NT, or Linux).

The point of my comment was just hypocrisy. As of today, ALL(most) features of OS X are in Linux are in 2006 (like 2D vector graphic, buggy composite display) and of course in Vista. But Windows 2000 has for first time the kernel thread pools (which are GCD in Snow Leopard) and there are benchmarks showing that OS X were not performing well on G5 in multithreaded benchmarks (write in a search engine: anandtech g5 tiger.

Even today when we compare Vista (or 7) with Snow Leopard we have the same capabilities (like: Java vs .NET, PDF display, color profiles, etc.) but only that you can buy an full featured laptop at 1000 dollars (or euro) which if was named Apple you will pay at least 1700, and Windows license is not included.

This is why I’m glad at the end I have Flash on Android: is about the ecosystem, an open one, informed one, with all your options in one place. Not one carrier, not one phone model (with it’s upgrades), not software.

Edit: added youtube link

In the case of Apple, what they do is focus on what it can do well and then trumpet such features to the heavens. That is no different than Microsoft who avoid the issue of user interface consistency, installation consistency, consistent driver quality and so on in favour of focus on what Windows does do well – it can work on a variety of systems. There is nothing dishonest or underhanded, that is how the world operates when marketing – focus on the strengths you bring to the market. When someone states that their operating system is ‘the most advanced’ then it is pretty subjective. Microsoft states theirs is the most secure release ever, Apple claims theirs is the most advanced ever, Linux distributors will claim theirs is the most feature rich ever. Hyperbole in marketing is the name of the game – it is up to you as an educated consumer to see beyond the marketing buzz and look at the specifications and whether they line up with your requirements.

As for the reason for going with Mac OS X – I went with Mac OS X because I wanted a UNIX core that taps into my geekiness and at the same time gives me access to mainstream applications such as Microsoft Office, Creative Suite and so on. So far Apple has delivered on what I want. To claim that people purchase Apple products simply off the back of the fact they’re named Apple may describe a very small number that I’m not going to deny exist. There was a women who was interviewed waiting in line for the iPad, when asked what she would use it for and whether she knew what it was all her response was, “I don’t know what it is but I’m going to buy it because it is from Apple”. Are there people who behave like that? sure, that is no different than the ‘true believers’ of Zune and the chap who got a Zune tattoo. For those of us who aren’t pulled into the vortex of marketing, we choose our computer based on what our needs are and whether a certain company meets those needs. Does a Mac cost more in terms of direct hardware alone? sure but one weighs up the cost with better battery life, an operating system that is enjoyable to use, the ascetics of the device and so on. Just because you can’t see the obvious reasons why an individual chooses to buy an Apple doesn’t mean that Apple users equal consumerist drones marching to the drum beat of Apple’s marketing.

Where Apple did go wrong was back in 2002 with the release of 10.2 which allowed the mixing of Carbon and Cocoa. In 2002 they should have stopped development of Carbon, announced all future focus will be on Cocoa and then sent a clear message that any future enhancements one does to their applications should be written in Cocoa (given you can mix Carbon and Cocoa). That would have sent a clear path to developers which wouldn’t have resulted in the Photoshop fiasco that resulted in Mac users left out i the cold. I wonder, though, whether there was a hope that Carbon and Cocoa could be kept as equals as so far as frameworks available for developers but they realised later on that such a programme wasn’t feasible. I can only speculate on the reasons. I guess at that stage the ideas such as iPhone and iPad weren’t even considered thus maintaining both wasn’t considered an unreasonable goal.

Your timing is off. Mac OS (on the 680×0 at least), ran better than Windows 95/95. I never had trouble with communications dropping the way I did with Windows, which is why I relied on OS/2 on 80×86 machines.

Oh, you mean it ran better because of lack of any memory protection (which was optional… go figure) or because applications need to specifically designed to use preemptive multitasking and, if not designed that way, MacOS was using a cooperative multitasking with all apps sharing a single process? 😉 So when your calculator app banged, ALL processes needed to be closed…

Hell, Windows 3.x had memory protection and in Windows95 all apps used preemptive multitasking without requiring to be specifically designed for that.

Hell, Windows 3.x had memory protection and in Windows95 all apps used preemptive multitasking without requiring to be specifically designed for that.

I just remember that whenever one or another app crashed and went into an eternal loop it’d make the WHOLE system unresponsive and you couldn’t do anything without resetting the system. As such I’d say their pre-emptive model didn’t really work too well.

Hell, Windows 3.x had memory protection and in Windows95 all apps used preemptive multitasking without requiring to be specifically designed for that. I just remember that whenever one or another app crashed and went into an eternal loop it’d make the WHOLE system unresponsive and you couldn’t do anything without resetting the system. As such I’d say their pre-emptive model didn’t really work too well.

It happened mostly for 16bit applications (which, unfortunately, was still the case with MANY system applications) and when a misbehaving application was trying to write to a specific area which was not protected. In most cases, you could spot such rogue applications and stop using them.

By the way, I’m not saying that Windows9x was perfect because they were very far from that. As I wrote to other post, everyone knew that first reliable Windows desktop version was Windows 2000 Workstation.

But saying that MacOS was then more advanced than Windows is pure nonsense.

What we see here are the instance handles required for Windows cooperative multitasking. Granted, the mechanism was changed in Win32 (you still need to drag that baggage along) but it was still a single threaded cooperative multitasking system.

😉 So when your calculator app banged, ALL processes needed to be closed…

Which was the same for Windows 3.11/95/98/98SE/ME most of the time.

I switched a bit more than three years ago from XP + Linux + Solaris to OS X + Linux + Solaris and i can’t imagine possibly to go back to Windows. I have to occasionally use Windows XP/Vista/7 at work, helping out numb nuts with their little IT problems or writing in house tools and i suffer when i have to use it. I can’t believe how Windows managed to make no progress at all since Windows 2000. All they seem to do are new Themes, which is especially sad, since they only seem to come in butt ugly.

What i find especially hideous is the software culture that developed around that disgusting mess. Hello Windows developers: don’t you think it is time to embrace Unicode? Okay it is only out there for twenty years and we all know how incredibly slow the world of computing evolves, but do you really think it is adequate that your software can’t open files if they are named in a language that isn’t covered by ASCII code?

Seriously, whenever I forget at work that I’m sitting at a Windows machine (because i got used to my eyes hurting) and try to Unzip a file that one of our Japanese partners sent us and I see WinZIP crash because it just can’t handle Unicode strings, i wonder how anyone could possible put up with something like that and even *pay* to get tortured this way.

Windows 3.11 had no memory protection, not even optional one and neither did Windows 95/98/98SE/ME.

Uncorrect. Windows9x had memory protection even if it was not perfect since it was not protecting first megabyte of userland memory. Even if not perfect, it was there and was able to protect your processes. You could easily spot which programs were going to make system crash after a few time you were using them.

Get an Windows 98, Visual Studio 6 and go see for yourself the horrible pile of crap Windows was pre NT5.

Uh oh I used Visual Basic since v1.0 so you’re not talking to someone not knowing what he’s talking about, friend 😉 And you were inaccurate again: NT4 is/was considered one of the best systems around. Of course, things went 1000% better when Windows9x/ME line was merged into NT one. But that’s another story.

May i point out the definition of a WinMain() for you? int WINAPI WinMain(HINSTANCE hInstance, Instance HINSTANCE hPrevInstance, LPSTR lpCmdLine, int nCmdShow) What we see here are the instance handles required for Windows cooperative multitasking.

As you noticed, that was for Win16 apps only. 16bit apps were still cooperately multitasking but that was expected since you needed to support your old Windows3.x and MS-DOS applications.

Again, it was enough to ensure that applications you were running were all 32 to get memory protection and preemptive multitasking. It happend in a few months, given the pace of millions of developers releasing lots of apps everyday at that time.

Which was the same for Windows 3.11/95/98/98SE/ME most of the time.

I don’t agree, talking about W95+.

I have to occasionally use Windows XP/Vista/7 at work, helping out numb nuts with their little IT problems or writing in house tools and i suffer when i have to use it.[…] What i find especially hideous is the software culture that developed around that disgusting mess. Hello Windows developers: don’t you think it is time to embrace Unicode? Okay it is only out there for twenty years and we all know how incredibly slow the world of computing evolves, but do you really think it is adequate that your software can’t open files if they are named in a language that isn’t covered by ASCII code?

I don’t know what you’re talking about. Are you sure you’ve been in to Windows developing in the last … hmm… say, 7 years? Not supporting Unicode? What? Just out of curiosity, what technologies are you using when developing for Windows ? I don’t think you’re using latest tools and technologies…

and try to Unzip a file that one of our Japanese partners sent us and I see WinZIP crash because it just can’t handle Unicode strings, i wonder how anyone could possible put up with something like that and even *pay* to get tortured this way.

Uh? What does that have anything to do with Windows? 😉 You seems to ignore that, given backward compatibility of Windows, there are many apps written for Win32 which haven’t been updated. I know you’re not used to that, considering that MacOS and other OSes needs apps to be rewritten on each system new version, but that’s a VALUE for developers.

Of course, if WinZIP guys have been lazy to update their code to keep up with improvements and new versions, they’re fully to blame. And today a Windows system won’t crash for a poorly written app, never. I’m just happy that a few months ago I had to run an old MS-DOS application to get a code a customer needed and it worked like a charm. Maybe you’re happy when you need to recompile your applications only to find that they won’t work anyway. I’m not. 😉

To summarize, I wasn’t stating that Windows95/98 were perfect or most advanced systems you could run. We all know that desktop stability and reliability for Windows system started with Windows 2000 Workstation, first edition to sport WindowsNT line into a desktop product.

However, you can’t really say two things:

* that MacOS was then more advanced than Windows. That was simply wrong. And I just mentioned two reasons but if we dig, I could mention tens of them. For example, Apple was unable to provide system-wide advanced subsystems until CoreData, CoreAudio and CoreVideo in MacOS X when Windows developers had that since Windows95… just to mention a few more items.

* that Microsoft could not make reliable systems at that time: WindowsNT is there to prove it.

That was actually what i was getting at with the hideous software culture evolving around it. I tried every archiving app on Windows. Not one of them supports Unicode. I tried every image viewer I could find. Not one of them supports Unicode.

It is simply impossible to find Apps that support Unicode on Windows, not even all Microsoft apps support Unicode. The only way to get Apps that don’t crash on you if you want/need unicode support are Java apps, but then why use Windows anyway if you don’t have to.

I can still run most OS X 10.1 software, so i don’t quite get what you are getting at. I also can run most XP software on Vista, but I more often run into XP software that doesn’t run on Vista then i run into OS X 10.1 software which doesn’t run on 10.6.

Okay, so i don’t get to run Software from the late nineties, but what do i care? Windows software mostly buys backwards compatibility to Windows 95 by sucking generally (the Unicode issue being one such thing – most projects ignore it to ensure Windows 9x/ME compatibility).

How many Windows 95 boxes do you estimate still being in use?

I’m aware of the fact that Windows theoretically supports Unicode. What do I care when virtually no Windows software does?

I don’t have problems like that on Linux, OS X or Solaris. I don’t have stupid activation issues. And I don’t have software that comes with anti piracy measurements that f*ck up an OS installation.

Windows is a Nightmare and I do not expect that to change. I only wish it would go away, but I’m afraid I’m stuck suffering it, at least at work hours.

There are applications that support Unicode and not a few. If you talk about almost any .NET application supports it. And .NET gets along with using Unicode. What your problem really is, is that zip format may not support in some implementations the unicode. 7zip (LZMA) states that it does it: http://www.7-zip.org/7z.html

The idea of being a lot of years (not just one iteration or two compatible) is a factor on migrating to new OS. Some database tools may do their job just right and they are VB6 or MFC tools. You cannot migrate them over night, or even never.

Comparing Windows with OS X, both give separate class of advantages (probably a reason why OS X did evolve that fast compared with Vista original fiasco), but compatibility is a turning point for some. Supposedly a developer wants to write a CAD system (a field that I’m related with) and it starts from an opensource kernel that was compiled and thought to run on 32 bits, X Windows handle and single threaded. If you will want to make that application to support OS X you will have to invest a lot of time porting some parts that don’t behave that good on this OS.

At the end I will just want to state: OS X is a good OS, probably not that good with what competition offers to date.

What I found hilarious is that in the past I needed to show live security camera footage on the iphone.. We had to use the javascript way (other method’s weren’t support), and after less than an hour, Safari on the iphones/ipod touch would crash.

I also love how Apple salespeople have told friends that “OSX is immune against viruses”. I also love how Steve Jobs thinks flash is only for video.

What I found hilarious is that in the past I needed to show live security camera footage on the iphone.. We had to use the javascript way (other method’s weren’t support), and after less than an hour, Safari on the iphones/ipod touch would crash.

Amazing how all these anecdotes seem to only appear on forums such as this and never by high profile pundits or blogs. It has all the reliability of, “a friend of a friend of a friend who’s uncles wife’s sister in law had a problem with Safari crashing which must mean that Apple sucks”.

I also love how Apple salespeople have told friends that “OSX is immune against viruses”.

Or your friends not listening to the full sentence which would have been something entirely different. I’ve never come across an Apple employee or a Apple sales person stating that Apple is immune from virus’s – the most I have heard is the claim that virus’s aren’t an issue right now because there are none in the wild (malware isn’t a virus – so don’t try to be dishonest). The emphasis is on ‘right now’ because it could change in the future but it is doubtful since almost all the effort is on malware these days and not the traditional virus’s I remember back in my Amiga days.

I also love how Steve Jobs thinks flash is only for video.

Where did Steve Jobs state that Flash is only used for video? All his statements point to him noting that Flash is primarily used on an end users desktop to play videos. Can Flash do other things? sure, no one has denied it but the primary reason one has Flash installed in the first place is to watch YouTube, Hulu, Vimeo, LiveLeak and so on.

I’m really so sick of Apple that I started to move away from them. I have an iPhone, but now I only use it to develop software for the company I work. I never recommend an Apple product to anyone. I had a Macbook but I returned to PC and installed Linux alongside Windows 7. I just hope Apple will lose the market share they started to gain, not only with iPhone but also Laptops and MP3 market. I feel that we need to support other platforms.

…is how people see these two any differently. Adobe claim that Flash was originally written for touchscreen devices, which is an absolute joke as anyone who used early versions of it would know, and touting open document formats to mean that Flash is open is like Microsoft saying Office is open because the document formats are published. Then claiming that they are more open than Apple; how many opensource projects do Adobe contribute to, how many do Apple?

Flash and iPhone OS are both closed proprietary environments. And just like Adobe have total control over what happens with Flash, Apple has total control over what happens with iPhone OS. Adobe can, and do, say what you can and can’t integrate into Flash content, just like Apple say what you can and can’t put on iPhone OS.

I have a little different perspective on Adobe as well. For over four years I’ve been involved in development of an online business using a product called Business Catalyst. Adobe’s initial involvement was through a plug-in for Dreamweaver that allowed creation of content for the CMS instead of using the terrible web based editors. Through our involvement we pushed for other methods of editing content like direct FTP access for using apps like the awesome Coda. Although Business Catalyst as a company were always a little slow at responding we had direct phone numbers and email addresses for the support guys and their bosses in case things were taking a bit too long.

Just over a year ago Adobe bought Business Catalyst, and everything’s been a downhill slide since. There are NO direct phone numbers – to the point where you can even phone Adobe offices which are the published contact details for Business Catalyst and ask to speak to someone in Business Catalyst only to receive the reply “this is Adobe, we think you have the wrong number”. There are no direct email addresses any more, all support is through a ticketing system and at present we have one ticket more that EIGHT MONTHS old, with the average time for completion of anything we’ve ticketed being more than three weeks. And now we’re hearing murmurs that they’re going to make Dreamweaver the ONLY external method for updating your site. Bye bye Coda and the like. So much for being open.

So anyone who thinks one is any better than the other when it comes to these things needs to lower their own RDF.

Just over a year ago Adobe bought Business Catalyst, and everything’s been a downhill slide since.

I have worked for several companies that where bought at some point, and I’ve always experienced the same. The people who made the company a success left and suits came in and killed all processes and procedures that had been established over the years based on experience and best practice.

I’m aware that takeovers sometimes improve a company, but in most cases the buyer doesn’t really know or care that it’s destroying the company.

Exactly. Adobe is focusing on profits, not their customers. Too many companies don’t realize that in the long term, focusing on customers is the best way to increase your profits.

Note: not defending Apple here. Just really irritated that Fireworks CS5 is mostly bug fixes and I’m expected to pay big bucks for something that crashes every day (and has been for the last 6 months)

I’ve got Fireworks CS4 and it wasn’t until CS5 was launched that Adobe finally released an update for Fireworks CS4 which would address the crash and corruption back found when exiting the application:

4/28/10 This update to AdobeÂ® FireworksÂ® CS4 software fixes all known crash and data loss bugs, and in general improves stability for users running Fireworks CS4 on Mac OS X. The Snow Leopard crash on quit problem has also been fixed. We recommend that all Fireworks CS4 Mac users install this updater.

Adobe also knew that Cocoa was going to be the future platform for Mac OS X and yet they continued with Carbon. Then to compound issues further there was a lead manager who came out telling people that they should give up on Mac and move to Windows a couple of years ago. It is difficult not to walk away from looking at Adobe with the distinct impression that supporting Mac OS X is more a reluctant act rather than something they’re actually passionately committed to.

I don’t this should be the issue. As one commenter in the linked original post said, and I agree with it, take Windows, there are a lot (!) of crappy applications for/on it, including Apple products big time (e.g. quicktime and safari (oh god save us all)), and they all can live in relative peace. The issue here – which gets blurred more with each new iteration of this sharade – is that Apple retains too much control over the OS, which is nothing new really, but it’s fairly over the edge when they preach their view about others’ software quality and purpose to be the only truthful one, them being perfection embodied, others being mere mortals who should be enlightened.

It is idiotic, and the only ones they will hurt are themselves. And they deserve it.

Adobe cannot get themselves out of the hole they are in until they first admit that they are wrong.

Watching this train wreak unfold is both sad and fascinating.

It reminds me very much of the claim that Adobe made that they never ship final versions of Flash with known crashes. We all know about the the bug that caused Flash to crash, had been existence for 16months and not a single thing was done by Adobe to provide an update to fix that bug until some heat was put underneath them.

From what I understand ‘Pepper NPAPI’ should improve Flash performance, out of process plugin provides better stability, and sandboxing with WebKit2 will hopefully improve security but these improvements don’t negate the fact that when Adobe was staring a bug straight in their face all they did was go into a state of denial instead of doing something abut it the first time it was reported.

For anyone wondering, the blue Lego is an Apple specific icon showed in the browser when Flash is missing. If you (like me) stay away from Apple products, you probably donâ€™t understand this picture. You could more or less say that if you find this funny you are an Apple fan boy.”

For anyone wondering, the blue Lego is an Apple specific icon showed in the browser when Flash is missing. If you (like me) stay away from Apple products, you probably donâ€™t understand this picture. You could more or less say that if you find this funny you are an Apple fan boy.”

You don’t have to be a fan boy to know what a placeholder icon for a missing plugin looks like.

I am curious who needs who most. It would be interesting to know what the number of Photoshop and Illustrator installs is worldwide on PC’s and MAC’s vs US Stats.

Because if Adobe cut support for the MAC they may be able to knock the legs out of Apple before they could create a product, and even if they did would it be accepted as industry standard. They may have to use virtualization to run a PC version.

Or if someone like Google or Microsoft bought Adobe they could force that hand by ending support. Its not like both those companies don’t have an axe to grind with Apple.

Sure design shops are almost exclusive MAC’s in US. I wonder what is used worldwide. I know in Hollywood a lot of things are actually done with custom software on linux boxes and not photoshop because of the massive file sizes.